to your
tyranny; to go and bury myself in the heart of Russia in the middle of
winter--By the way, we must buy some furs; that will be rather exciting.
But you must not expect me to be very intimate with your Russian
friends. I am not quite sure that I like Russians"--she went toward him,
laying her two hands gently on his broad breast and looking up at
him--"not quite sure--especially Russian princes who bully their wives.
You may kiss me, however, but be very careful. Now I must go and finish
dressing. We shall be late as it is."

She gathered together her fan and gloves, for she had petulantly dragged
off a pair which did not fit.

"And you will ask Maggie to come with us?" she said.

He held open the door for her to pass out, gravely polite even to his
wife--this old-fashioned man.

"Yes," he answered; "but why do you want me to ask her?"

"Because I want her to come."

CHAPTER XVII

CHARITY

In these democratic days a very democratic theory has exploded. Not so
very long ago we believed, or made semblance of belief, that it is
useless to put a high price upon a ticket with the object of securing
that selectness for which the high-born crave. "If they want to come,"
Lady Champignon (wife of Alderman Champignon) would say, "they do not
mind paying the extra half-guinea."

But Lady Champignon was wrong. It is not that the self-made man cannot
or will not pay two guineas for a ball-ticket. It is merely that, in his
commercial way, he thinks that he will not have his money's worth, and
therefore prefers keeping his two guineas to spend on something more
tangible--say food. The nouveau riche never quite purges his mind of the
instinct commercial, and it therefore goes against the grain to pay
heavily for a form of entertainment which his soul had not the
opportunity of learning to love in its youth. The aristocrat, on the
other hand, has usually been brought up to the cultivation of enjoyment,
and he therefore spends with perfect equanimity more on his pleasure
than the bourgeois mind can countenance.

The ball to which Paul and Etta were going was managed by some titled
ladies who knew their business well. The price of the tickets was
fabulous. The lady patronesses of the great Charity Ball were tactful
and unabashed. They drew the necessary line (never more necessary than
it is to-day) with a firm hand.

The success of the ball was therefore a foregone conclusion. In French
fiction there is invar